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George Homer Ryan (born
February 24, 1934, in Maquoketa, Iowa) was the
Governor of the U.S. state of Illinois from 1999
until 2003. He was a member of the Republican Party.
Although Ryan became nationally known when he "raised the national
debate on capital punishment" by
issuing a moratorium on executions in 2000, his 35-year political
career was tarnished by scandal. Investigations into widespread
corruption during his administration led to his retirement from
politics in 2003 and federal corruption convictions in 2006. Ryan
entered federal prison on November 7, 2007, to begin serving a
sentence of six years and six months. As of December 10,
2008, he is housed at the satellite prison camp adjacent to the
Federal Correctional
Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Ryan married his high school sweetheart, Lura Lynn Ryan, and they
have five daughters (including a set of triplets) Julie, Joanne,
Jeanette, Lynda and Nancy and one son, "Homer" (George Homer Ryan,
Jr.) Ryan's brother Thomas "Tom" Ryan has also been a significant
political figure in Kankakee County.
In addition, Ryan's sister Kathleen Dean's former son-in-law Bruce
Clark, is Kankakee County Clerk.

Term as Governor

Ryan was elected Governor in 1998, defeating his opponent, Glenn Poshard, by a 51%–47% margin. Ryan's
running mate was Corinne Wood.

One of Ryan's pet projects as governor was an extensive repair of
the Illinois Highway System called "Illinois FIRST." FIRST was an
acronym for "Fund for Infrastructure, Roads, Schools, and Transit."
Signed into law in May 1999, the law created a $6.3 billion package
for use in school and transportation projects. With various
matching funds programs, Illinois FIRST provided $2.2 billion for
schools, $4.1 billion for public transportation, another $4.1
billion for roads, and $1.6 billion for other projects.

He also improved Illinois's technology infrastructure, creating one
of the first cabinet-level Offices of Technology in the country and
bringing up Illinois's technology ranking in a national magazine
from 48th out of the 50 states when he took office to 1st just two
years later.

Ryan committed record funding to education, including 51% of all
new state revenues during his time in office, in addition to the
billions spent through Illinois FIRST that built and improved
schools and education infrastructure.

In 1999, Ryan sparked controversy by becoming the first sitting
U.S. Governor to meet with Cuban President Fidel Castro. Ryan's visit led to a $1 million
donation of humanitarian aid, but drew criticism from anti-Castro
groups.

Opposition to capital punishment

Ryan first gained national attention in the area of capital
punishment when, as governor, he declared a moratorium on his
state's death penalty in 2000. "We have now freed more people than
we have put to death under our system," he said. "There is a flaw
in the system, without question, and it needs to be studied." At
the time, Illinois had executed 12 people since the reinstitution
of the death penalty in 1977 (with one execution, that of Ripper Crew member Andrew Kokoraleis occurring
early during Ryan's term), but had been forced to release 13 people
based on new evidence. Ryan called for a commission to study the
issue, while noting, "I still believe the death penalty is a proper
response to heinous crimes, but I want to make sure ... that the
person who is put to death is absolutely guilty."

The issue had garnered the attention of the public when a death row
inmate, Anthony Porter, who had spent
15 years on death row, was within two days of being executed when
his lawyers won a stay on the grounds that he may have been
mentally retarded. He was ultimately exonerated with the help of
a group of student journalists at Northwestern
University who had uncovered evidence that was used to prove
his innocence. In 1999 Porter was released, charges were
subsequently dropped, and another person, Alstory Simon, confessed
and pleaded guilty to the crime Porter had been erroneously
convicted of.

Ultimately, on January 11, 2003, just days before leaving office,
Ryan commuted (to "life" terms) the sentences of everyone on or
waiting to be sent to Illinois' death row
a total of 167 convicts due to his belief that the death penalty
could not be administered fairly. He also pardoned four inmates,
Aaron Patterson, Madison Hobley and
Leroy Orange (who were released), and
Stanley Howard. However, Patterson is currently serving 30 years in
prison after being arrested for drug trafficking he committed after
his release from death row. Howard remains in prison for kidnapping
and three rapes he committed before his arrest for murder.

These were four of ten death row inmates known as the "Death Row
10," due to widely reported claims that the confessions that they
had given in their respective cases had been coerced through police
torture. Ryan is not the first state governor to have granted
blanket commutations to death row
inmates during his final days in office. Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller also commuted the
sentence of every death row inmate in that state as he left office
after losing his 1970 bid for a third two-year term.

Ryan won praise from death penalty opponents, and was nominated for
the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. Many conservatives, though, were
opposed to the decision, and some questioned the motives behind the
commutations, which came as a federal corruption investigation
closed in on the governor and his closest political allies (see
below). Conservative columnist Pat
Buchanan called Ryan "pathetic", and suggested that the
governor was attempting to save his public image in hopes of
avoiding prison himself.

Scandals, trial and conviction

Ryan's political career was marred by a scandal involving the
illegal sale of government licenses, contracts and leases by state
employees during his prior service as Secretary of State; in the
wake of numerous convictions of former aides, he chose not to run
for reelection in 2002. The scandals are widely believed to have
hurt Republicans' chances for re-winning Illinois' governorship
state Illinois Attorney
GeneralJim Ryan lost to U.S.
Representative Rod Blagojevich in
the 2002 election, ending 25 years of Republican governorships. All
told, seventy-nine former state officials, lobbyists, and others
have been since charged in the investigation, and at least 76 have
been convicted.

The
corruption scandal that led to Ryan's downfall began over a decade
earlier as a federal investigation into a deadly crash in Wisconsin that killed six children of Rev. Duane
"Scott" Willis and his wife, Janet . The investigation revealed a
scheme inside Ryan's secretary of state's office in which
unqualified truck drivers obtained licenses through bribes. As the
AP wrote: "The probe expanded over the next eight years into a
wide-ranging corruption investigation that eventually reached Ryan
in the governor's office."

In March 2003, Scott Fawell, Ryan's
former chief of staff and campaign manager, was convicted along
with Ryan's campaign fund on federal charges of racketeering and
fraud. Former deputy campaign manager Richard Juliano pled guilty
to related charges and testified against Fawell at trial. The
investigation finally reached the former governor, and in December
2003, Ryan and lobbyist Lawrence
Warner were named in a 22-count federal indictment. The charges
included racketeering, bribery, extortion, money laundering and tax
fraud. The indictment alleged that Ryan steered several state
contracts to Warner and other friends; disbursed campaign funds to
relatives and to pay personal expenses; and obstructed justice by
attempting to end the state investigation of the license-for-bribes
scandal. He was charged with lying to investigators and accepting
cash, gifts and loans in return for his official actions as
governor. In late 2005, the case went to trial.

Fawell, under pressure from prosecutors, became a key witness
against Ryan and Warner. He agreed to a plea deal with that cut the
prison time for himself and his fiancee, Andrea Coutretsis. Fawell
was a controversial witness, not hiding his disdain for prosecutors
from the witness stand. According to CBS Chicago political editor
Mike Flannery, insiders claimed that Fawell had been "much like a
son" to the former governor throughout their careers. At Ryan's
trial, Fawell acknowledged that the prosecution had his "head in a
vise", and that he found his cooperation with the government
against Ryan "the most distasteful thing I've ever done".
Nonetheless, he spent several days on the witness stand testifying
against Ryan and Warner. Fawell, once a tough-talking political
strategist, wept on the witness stand as he acknowledged that his
motivation for testifying was to spare Coutretsis a long prison
sentence for her role in the conspiracy. The jury was twice sent
out of the courtroom so that Fawell could wipe tears from his eyes
and regain his composure. Ryan's daughters and a son-in-law,
Michael Fairman, were implicated by testimony during the trial.
Stipulations agreed upon by the defense and prosecution and
submitted to the court included admissions that all five of Ryan's
daughters received illegal payments from the Ryan campaign fund. In
addition to Lynda Fairman, who received funds herself beyond those
her husband Michael testified he had received, the stipulations
also included admissions from the rest of Ryan's daughters that
they did little or no work in return for payments from their
father's campaign funds. In addition, Fawell testified that Ryan's
mother's housekeeper was illegally paid from campaign funds, and
that Ryan's adopted sister, Nancy Ferguson, also received campaign
funds without performing campaign work. The prosecution took nearly
four months to present their case, as a parade of other witnesses
(including Juliano) followed Fawell. Two of the original jurors
were dismissed after it was revealed they had lied on their juror
questionnaires. They falsely claimed having never faced criminal
charges, causing the jury to be impaneled with alternate
jurors.

On April 17, 2006, the jury found Ryan and
Warner guilty on all counts. However, when ruling on post-trial
motions, the judge dismissed two counts of the convictions against
Ryan for lack of proof. Ryan said that he would appeal the verdict,
largely due to the issues with the jury.

Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal
prosecutor, noted: "Mr. Ryan steered contracts worth millions of
dollars to friends and took payments and vacations in return.
When he
was a sitting governor, he lied to the F.B.I. about this
conduct and then he went out and did it again." He charged
that one of the most egregious aspects of the corruption was Ryan's
action after learning that bribes were being paid for licenses.
Instead of ending the practice he tried to end the investigation
that had uncovered it, Fitzgerald said, calling the moment "a
low-water mark for public service." Ryan became the third Illinois
governor since 1968 to be convicted of white-collar crimes, following Dan Walker and Otto
Kerner, Jr..

On September 6, 2006, he was sentenced to serve six and a half
years in prison. Ryan was ordered to go to prison on January 4,
2007, but the appellate court granted an appeal bond, allowing him
to remain free pending the outcome of the appeal. His conviction
was affirmed by the Court of Appeals of the Seventh Circuit on
August 21, 2007, and review by the entire Seventh Circuit was
denied on October 25, 2007. The Seventh Circuit then rejected
Ryan's bid to remain free while he asked the U.S. Supreme Court to
hear his case; the opinion called the evidence of Ryan's guilt
"overwhelming." The Supreme Court rejected an extension of
his bail, and Ryan reported to the Federal Prison Camp in Oxford,
Wisconsin, on November 7, 2007.He was transferred on
February 29, 2008, to a medium security facility in Terre Haute,
Indiana, after Oxford changed its level of medical care and
stopped housing inmates over 70 years old. He is listed as
Federal Inmate Number 16627-424, and is scheduled for release on
July 4, 2013.

Ryan's defense has been provided pro bono
by Winston & Strawn, a law firm managed by former governor
Jim Thompson. The defense cost the
firm $10 million through mid-November 2005. Estimates of the cost
to the firm as of September, 2006, ranged as high as $20 million.
Ryan served as Thompson's lieutenant governor from
1983 to 1991. After the United
States Supreme Court declined to hear Ryan's appeal, Thompson indicated
that he would ask then President George
W.Bush to commute Ryan's
sentence to time served. United
States SenatorDick Durbin wrote a
letter to Bush dated December 1,
2008, asking him to commute Ryan's sentence, citing Ryan's age and
his wife's frail health, saying, "This action would not pardon him
of his crimes or remove the record of his conviction, but it would
allow him to return to his wife and family for their remaining
years." Bush did not pardon Ryan before the
end of his term on January 20, 2009.